Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Storing left-over ingredients

I buy canned coconut milk & tomato puree often. But once opened, the problem is how to store them. If stored in the refrigerator, it has to be used up quickly. But many times the need to use these ingredients in your recipe doesn't happen often. When these ingredients are left in the refrigerator for more than week, they develop a kind of fungal growth & have to be discarded.

So, I started emptying out the contents (after using the required amount in one recipe) into a freezer bag & popping them into the freezer after sealing it tightly. But there was still 1 problem. It would freeze solid into one bid lump & it would be almost impossible to get portion sizes out of it.

Coming to the reason behind this post, I was trying to figure out what to do - every time I wanted only part of the coconut milk or tomato puree to add to a recipe, I would have to break the one big frozen lump into pieces with a rolling pin. Sounds crazy??? Yes, that's what I've been doing all these days/months/years!!!

To freeze them into individual portions - Pour your ingredient (coconut milk, tomato puree, pasta sauce or any other liquid ingredient that would have to be frozen to have a longer shelf life) into ice cube trays & freeze them overnight. Once frozen, carefully un-mold them from the tray & transfer these pieces into freezer bags.
Every time you need single portions to add to your favorite recipe, just remove it from the freezer bag & add them to your recipe.